It was one of the evils which beset the reign of Gustavus that revolts
constantly occurred in various provinces and for various reasons.
Dalecarlia took the lead. The inhabitants were not able to bear the
distinction won by their great patriotic services in the times of
Engelbrekt, the Stures, and Gustavus. Their complaints were mostly
unreasonable, sometimes ridiculous, as when they tried to prescribe the
kind of cloth and colors to be used at court, and so forth. There was
no fable, however stupid, which was not readily believed by them and
the responsibility placed on the king. Particularly was everything
eagerly swallowed which spoke of injustice committed against the
descendants of the Stures. A daring pretender took advantage of this
fact. He was born of the lowest peasant class, serving on an estate
in Westmanland, where he had stolen a sum of money from his master.
Appearing in Dalecarlia, where he claimed that he was a son of Lord
Sten and Christine Gyllenstierna, he gained a great deal of support
among the yeomen, who cried with him like children when he spoke
of his noble father and asked them to pray for his soul. The false
pretender had his instructions from Peder Sunnanvæder; he married in
Norway a woman of noble birth, and, upon his return to Dalecarlia,
surrounded himself with a regular court. An end was put to his career
by a letter from Christine Gyllenstierna, written at the request of
the king, in which she told the Dalecarlians that her son Nils, whom
the pretender impersonated, had recently died, and that an impostor
was misleading them. The false Nils Sture answered by claiming that he
was born before marriage, the would-be-reason why his mother did not
acknowledge him. This even the Dalecarlians found was a stretching of
truth. The pretender, who had been stamping coins with his image and
held the demeanor of a ruling prince, fled to Norway and thence to
Rostock, where he was captured and beheaded. No blood was shed during
this period of revolt; but the king, who was crowned at Upsala in 1528,
proceeded from his coronation to Dalecarlia with an army of 14,000 men.
He commanded the Dalecarlians to meet him, and forgave them after a
severe sermon of reproach, making them surrender the chief supporters
of the “Daljunker,” who were executed on the spot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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